


Hymn, Chant or Song of Praise (8)

by Lucyemers



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Spoilers for Canticle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2018-10-08 14:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10389360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucyemers/pseuds/Lucyemers
Summary: Canticleas seen through the eyes of both Morse and Thursday





	1. Sudden, unreasoning terror (5)

_Morse_

The restlessness had always been there. He had loved nothing more than to go to Sunday meeting with his mother, but the silence had stirred up creeping thoughts, fears without form, half realized shadows of worry that would lurk at the edges of his thoughts. Brain games, puzzles, anagrams, cross words, counting if he was desperate, that would hold it at bay. In those days it was more of a game.

After she had died was when they really took hold. One passing thought would stick and he’d wake in the night gasping, starting out of a dream. 

It is the same lurking, sick dread that strikes him first when the drugs flood him. Panic personified, like the hot breath of some menacing otherworldly thing, just behind him, never quite there, never quite within his field of vision but inexplicably known.

The beast is behind him…

The edge of the rooftop is before him…

The gun is poised...  
And worse than any of this is the waiting, the dread, amplified to a pitch so discordant that he weeps, pleads, and loses any sense of time beyond the relentless driving, crushing knowledge that everything he has ever feared will come to pass is waiting for him in the next moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sudden, unreasoning terror (5)
> 
> PANIC


	2. Incapable of helping (9)

_Thursday_

Morse had mercifully settled somewhat for the ride in the ambulance. But only inasmuch as he was physically still. He lay flat on his back, wrists held fast to the gurney. All the terrified fight that he had put up against Thursday, Strange, the doctors, was in his eyes. They were always bright and always so very alight with thought, discernment, very occasionally delight. And now, terror. He was fighting something within himself and clearly losing. Thursday had seen it too many times in the war, lads in hospital who couldn’t escape horrors that would thrive, forever in their own mind. 

He meets his eyes, trying to make some kind of connection there, like trying to draw out a poison by sheer force of will. It’s all in vain. Morse’s eyes go wider suddenly and then squeeze shut, blinkling desperately, hands fisted at his sides and his breath hitches and speeds up. There's a low desperate keening and a steady stream of tears and Thursday half wishes he would lose consciousness. It might be a mercy to them both. He brushes the tears from Morse's face in a soft sweeping motion that's more to comfort himself than the lad who has, in such a state, become a stand in for the children he has helped nurse through many a fever, and who he is as ineffectual now at comforting as he is the man shaking on the stretcher.

_Morse_

There is blood on his hands. He is scrubbing them, beating them against the ground that keeps yielding beneath him like a freshly dug grave. He hates to look because he knows that all the scrubbing will be for naught, and still the tang of iron will linger. There is no use closing his eyes, because they seemed not to be working properly. There is a blur of light and sound above him and it won’t settle into any one image or note. It is as if someone has taken the voices of angels, (he knows they are so, he's heard the arias they are capable of), and twisted and strangled them to shrill, screaming and choking. The ground seems to shake. And then he is choking and coughing and all goes dark. 

When awareness finds him he is flat on his back. There is a hand in his, but it has gone slack. He does not want to turn his head. He knows what he will find, and yet the knowing and not looking make it all the more unbearably inevitable. He turns and sees a slack hand and follows it with his eyes to the woman laid out before him. Eyes vacant, bruises on her neck, he had tried to kiss her once and it is this thought that has him brushing her cheek lightly. His fingers leave blood stains and he recoils at the contrast of deep red on nearly porcelain white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Incapable of helping (9)
> 
> POWERLESS


	3. Literally- Held Back, Figuratively-Staid (10)

_Thursday_  
He had always considered it a point of pride that he kept his heart not on his sleeve but firmly beneath his coat and his mind tucked safely beneath his hat. He had been a decent poker player the few times in life he’d joined in the name of camaraderie. Morse, he had always thought, for all his cleverness, would do best to avoid the game. In questioning suspects his judgement, bemusement, and disbelief played as quickly and easily across his face as light shining through the trees on a drive in the country. And yet for all this he was an intensely private man. The few glimpses he’d had into Morse’s past, his family, his romantic life, were just that: glimpses. And Morse seemed to want to keep it that way. 

Perhaps, he thinks to himself, this is why Thursday finds himself so undone as he sits, watching and waiting next to his bagman’s bed? Because he sits there and hears one sided conversations that slip in and out of coherence that he has no business hearing? Because he knows how much Morse would hate being seen in such a state? Yes, but more specifically because he fears Morse might be imprisoned in his own mind for...he doesn’t know how long. He knows he is in the best of care. The doctors have done all they can. Now all they can do was wait. Thursday helps the orderlies hold him still while they given him sedatives, keeping a firm almost business like hand to his shoulder while the other he places gently on Morse’s forehead, feeling his brow furrow in confusion and pain beneath his fingers as his thumb traces sweat dampened curls. Even as he does this Thursday realizes:there is his heart in that soft subtle movement. No matter, he thinks as the nurses and orderlies leave him to what he expects might be a lengthy vigil. He doesn’t mind shedding his coat and hat, not for Morse’s sake. He takes one of the lad’s hands in his and sits, sighing wearily. Lest he should do himself any harm Morse’s hands have been restrained, and as Thursday sits, exhaustion and worry battling within him, he fears his own usual stoic expression is not. 

 

_Morse_  
He turns his head. Shudders. There is a cold hand to his forehead and he allows himself just for a moment to lean into the touch. He realizes he's sweating though he’s cold. But his hands are somehow forcibly held to his sides. He knows where he is. It had been a dream, pointless to think… but of course he is still here, hands holding him down, hands to his forehead, seconds away from some kind of torment, perhaps tonight all the men who lurked in his dreams, strange bedfellows, some of them he knew he was directly responsible for having landed in the cells not far enough away to have missed the screams that echoed from his nightmare every time it claimed him. This time they’ve found their way to his bedside. They are flanking him. This time it isn’t a nightmare he is sure. IT was only a matter of time. Coppers don’t fair well in prison. He can’t move his hands. There is a hand to his head and doesn’t dare shake it off. He waits for the knife to his throat. When it didn’t come he fights. He struggles against the restraints to his hands, Moves to kick his assailants, and finds his feet are bound too. He swallows, waits, prays they kill him quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally- held back, figuratively-staid (10)
> 
> RESTRAINED


	4. Of or Relating to A Father (8)

_Thursday_  
It isn’t the first time he’s waited at a bedside. It’s not the first time he has followed the nurse down the echoing linoleum hall until he comes to a telephone. Years earlier, in a busier hospital with a harsher light, he hadn’t had to pause over the dial, wait until the nurse is far enough away to begin dialing. In London there had been a queue, and the connection had been poor. He’d heard half a dozen other people’s oft repeated news awash in numbness, relief or exhaustion. But now he’s the only person in the long hallway. And without the distraction he can’t help but remember what he said all those years before. When she answers the phone he doesn’t speak for moment, his breath catches in his throat as he has to stop himself from saying the exact same phrase. _He’s a bit touch and go just now. Go on to bed. I may need to stay the night._ The next morning he’d driven the newly widowed Mrs. Carter home and walked through his front door, straight past his family at breakfast, not trusting his eyes to hold up to his children’s smiles. “Fred?” She calls him back to the present and he can’t help but notice how hollow her voice is. Worry like this used to sharpen it. He could hear the edge of it before she even knew it was there. Now all he hears is exhaustion. It’s this oppressive sound of resignation that troubles him so deeply that he’s rewriting the words as he speaks them, “Go on to bed. And fix up Sam’s room in the morning. I’m bringing him home to ours when he’s through the worst of this.”

 _Morse_  
“Finish it” his father’s voice is cold and low, and even through the slurring there’s a sharp threat in it that has the right side of his face throbbing. His words are spent, but they’re hanging in the cold air around them still. “Weak”, “Useless”, “Going to let you sister starve at Christmas?”, “Be a man”, “Be a man, Endeavour, Jesus Christ” He moves closer and takes the rabbit, that fights him with renewed strength, into his arms. His hands are hot with blood and near its neck where the bullet is lodged it’s even harder to keep a grip. _It’s only a rabbit. It’s only a rabbit. It’s only a rabbit._ He’s saying it over and over in his head in time with the beating of his heart. But there’s too much blood for so small a creature. Too much blood, red, thick and bright on his hands, running down his arms and melting through the snow when it drops to the ground around them. Despite the fact that he’s sweating with the effort, the movement has set him shaking after hours of numbness in the cold. Shot after shot and nothing hit, and praying that it will be dark enough soon to give up, to go where he will be hungry but warm. And now finally the shot had found its way, but he still isn’t spared this added horror. He sets his hands, and twists the rabbit’s neck and feels it go abruptly still. Later as he skins the animal he has to drop it in the snow once more as he turns quickly away to be sick. He has no appetite for their eventual dinner. There will be more for Joyce, and at least there is that. On Boxing Day he finds the money in the back of his father’s wardrobe, goes into town and pays for enough food to see them through the week that he will spend locked in his room, avoiding the inevitable payment for his theft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of or Relating to A Father (8)
> 
> PATERNAL


	5. A Sudden Feeling of Solace (6)

_Morse_

He wakes with a vague memory of talk of sandwiches. Absurd. 

For a moment a half dozen snapshots of so many other mornings after the nights before turn through his head, banal and repetitive and over worn. He’d sworn it off, drink, for a time just after Susan. But that had been short lived. The siren song of scotch had been too tempting and much too effective at dulling pain, first physical, and then otherwise.

He has all the usual symptoms of a horrific hangover, but there’s something else. He opens his eyes and for a moment the remembered terror threatens to overwhelm him, to catch his breath in his throat and hold it there, but Thursday is sitting beside the bed, and watching him with eyes full of exhausted inquiry. 

“Sir?” Relief washes through him but leaves a lingering tinge of shame. He does not meet Thursdays eyes when he says it. He remembers hands on his arms, holding him fast while the room was tempest tossed and sickening. Those same hands are pocketing a pipe at present. 

Thursday’s eyes crinkle just slightly with the hint of something too weary to be called a smile. 

“Home, lad”, he nearly sighs it, and Morse wonders how long the pair of them have been here, waiting for what looks to be a bleak relief of a morning.

The doctor comes to give him a final once over, and addresses most of his final points to Thursday rather than Morse. He would be put off by this, as if having lost the run of his mind, he nearly winces at the thought, for naught but a few days, has doomed him to needing a caregiver as a child might. He would be put off, if he weren’t so exhausted. And when he bends to put on his shoes and finds that his head swims and has to be kept between his knees for several moments he doesn’t shrug off Thursday’s tentative, steadying hand. He allows himself to be lead to the car, the silence of the drive, marred only by the gentle purr of the engine, a blissful contrast to all the recently departed relentless discord of his mind these past few days. 

_Thursday_

The morning is awash in a dizziness of relief, and as Thursday shepherds him to the car Morse seems to be quite literally so. The unsteadiness of his step cements his decision to drive a few miles farther rather than risking the long flight of stairs down to Morse’s flat where there’s certainly no proper food or where Morse is sure to fall asleep halfway through cooking it. 

Morse starts from his uneasy slumber when the car stops and peers blearily at the house. Thursday watches the confusion play across his face for a split second before hurrying out of the car to help Morse out, not giving him a chance to protest. When he opens the door Morse is giving him an exasperated look that gives way to embarrassment when he rises and wobbles. His equilibrium is quickly gained, but when Thursday catches his eye for just a second, he’s not altogether sure there’s not some part of him is still flying a bit. He’s peering at the sky with a strange sort of wonder before he sighs deeply and follows Thursday into the house. Win is alight with worry when they cross the threshold, but her own particular type of worry that manifests in action, in this case in telling Morse all about the dinner that’s on the way. When Morse goes ashen at the mention of food Thursday kisses Win briefly on the cheek, whispering softly to her and leads Morse down the hall, not trusting him to the stairs and watches him sit heavily on the bed in the room that has been vacant for nearly six months since the morning their daughter left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Sudden Feeling of Solace (6) 
> 
> RELIEF


	6. A feeling of affinity with the feelings of another (7)

_Morse_

He leans back on the headboard. He’s barely left the bed since he’d managed to force down enough food to please Mrs Thursday. The two of them have said little to him since, not even to bid him goodnight, but he’s heard them quietly retire upstairs. The house is almost strangely quiet, and he shudders slightly when he thinks that it must only be the contrast of the Thursday’s tranquil home with the raging thoughts that so recently ruled him. But the silence doesn’t feel tranquil just now. It feels, he thinks, as he notes the framed photographs around the room-Joan and her mum at Christmas-Joan and Sam as children on a seaside holiday-Joan laughing at a school awards day with her friends- oppressive, an uneasy air of anticipation. 

The whole room feels much too tender. He can count the number of times he’s been in this house since she left on one hand. The way Thursday had looked at him as he’d stood on his doorstep, disheveled in a way Morse had never seen before or since, the elements of anger and desperation at war on his face, only to give way to exhaustion. And then he’d turned and led Morse in to sit and wait on their couch while he listened, both apart and very much part of the domestic tragedy playing out in the room beside. 

And now he’s back and he’s desperately tired, still somewhat ill, and he should want to lean into the softness of the blanket, smooth and comforting after days of rough hospital sheets. He resists, but gradually nods off into a fitful sleep, atop the bedding, straining to hold on to the steadiness of the ticking clock just outside the bedroom door.

He wakes to shuffling in the room, drawers opening and shutting. Her back is to him, but he knows her. Of course he does. He sits, moves to stop her. He’s on his feet and he’s trying to catch her eye in the mirror, but her reflection isn’t there. The illogic of it gives him pause before he starts to panic in earnest, finding her no longer in the room at all, hearing the front door slam though the bedroom door is closed still. He squeezes his eyes shut. He sits on the bed for a moment trying to slow his breathing. He has always possessed an exceedingly logical mind. He has always held fast to that. And the knowledge that his mind remains slightly adrift in hallucination does nothing to stop the shaking in his hands, the sickening rolling in his stomach. When the nausea overwhelms him he barely makes it to the hall bathroom sink before losing all the excellent dinner. And then someone’s hovering above him, turning on the taps, wetting a flannel and pressing it to his neck while he stays, shaking bent over the sink. He takes a few deep breaths, ashamed that he’s here, that he needs this, not wanting to look Thursday in the eye.

“Shhh...take it easy love, you’re alright.”

He startles, grabs the sink for just a moment to steady himself as his eyes focus in the dark on Mrs. Thursday.

_Win_

She’s not unused to being up at this hour. She spends her days so very tired, but in the middle of the night sleep, more often than not, is elusive. Usually she’ll sit and drink her tea and listen to the quietness of the house, and make halfhearted attempts at reading her book.

Tonight is no different. The first few hours of sleep had been a relief--to have Fred home after his constant back and forth to the hospital. But wakefulness had come again, as it always did, and halfway through making her tea she’d heard Joan’s door burst open and gone to help Morse lest he still be feeling as unsteady as he looked earlier in the evening. She didn’t trust him to be able to get back to bed on his own.

And now he’s staring at her, wide eyed as she keeps a hand on his shoulder while rinsing the sink. “I’m sorry”, he whispers uncertainly, “Did I wake you?”

“Of course not, love.” When she’s satisfied that he’s not about to fall over she starts to leave, giving him a moment of privacy but saying as she goes, “I think the kettle’s boiled if you feel up for it.”

She’s in the kitchen pulling last night’s teacup from the drying rack when she hears him in the doorway.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“Not tonight, no”, she tries for casualness. 

“Mrs. Thursday, you don’t have to--I probably should be at home in any case.”

She turns in time to see his face twist in its habitual manner: earnestness, embarrassment. She hasn’t said much to him since that morning. There have been a few desperate attempts to draw out some sort of answer from him--about Joan--and he’s told her as little as Fred. Well she might have known. But tonight she’s too tired for resentment. And she remembers the fear in Fred’s voice as he’d phoned her from the hospital, and she can’t help but feel so very relieved that he’s here, standing on his own two feet, mind intact and, an oddly comforting companion to her usually very lonely insomnia.

“You’re in no state to be walking or driving anywhere, especially at this hour. Go on through I’ll bring you a cuppa.”

She finds him not in the living room but at the dining room table. He seems to be scared of allowing himself a moment’s rest. She joins him. After a brief thank you he sips tentatively. His gaze is anywhere but her face and eventually comes to rest, she notes to herself, unsurprisingly since her gaze rests in the same spot without prompting, on Joan’s photograph on the sideboard.

He’s in too unsettled a state to take much note of her watching him, but when she sets her cup down in the saucer he blinks, like he’s waking from a dream, and for just a moment before he looks away, hand through his hair, shifting in the chair, they are looking each other dead in the eye. And his face is very nearly a mirror of hers. Then the moment is over and he’s hastily put his face back in the teacup for a long sip. She’s so very tired that she makes very little effort toward keeping the thought back now that it’s come into her head, “Were you dreaming of her, then?”

His eyes go big over the top of the teacup. He sets it down slowly, self consciously, and clears his throat. His cheeks blush and she can feel him starting to pull back from her in some small way. 

“Of course you may have dreamed of anything, the state you were in. I don’t mean to pry. I only ask because--” she sighs before she says it, not much sense in stopping now--”I dream of her nearly every night.”

She feels a slight smile about her lips, apologetic for the fact that her eyes have started to prickle just slightly. She takes another sip of her tea and the tears hold off. Well that’s a blessing.

He gapes at her. His eyes are wide and his face is all defenseless sadness before it contorts into confusion. “Mrs. Thursday...I don’t...I can’t pretend I know what you are going through.”

He hasn’t answered her question. She can feel herself softening towards him just a little more and says, “We can’t know anyone else’s pain, that’s the hardest part.” And it is. She knows this. She’s not sure why the same hurt has seemed to bring such silence between herself and Fred. She wishes she knew how to weather it better. She smiles and tries to give Morse, awake with her in the middle of the night when she’s been alone so many nights running, a way out. “I know you’re fond of her. If you’d like to talk, that would be alright.”

He sighs, finishes his tea and smiles just slightly. “I’d better get back to bed. Thank you.”

He rises, stops for a moment as if to say something and then continues down the hall. And she’s left on her own, like any other night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A feeling of affinity with the feelings of another (7)
> 
> EMPATHY
> 
> In the episode of Inspector Morse _Cherubim and Seraphim_ , Morse tells Lewis, "No one can imagine someone else's pain, Robbie. (perhaps the only time he calls him that??) That's the human tragedy." That line was one of my inspirations for this fic and ending with this chapter. My original thought was to have Thursday say it to Morse, but then...it seemed much more Win. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading this fic that took me waaaay too long to finish. I so appreciate all your feedback!


End file.
